After two and a half years of the war, Yemen became a collapsed state, where life was only a little restrained.

Repeated shelling destroyed bridges, hospitals and factories. Staff and doctors were unable to find their salaries, malnutrition and health services made the country’s citizens vulnerable to death. Sanaa airport has been shut down for more than a year, resulting in a disruption of travel and commercial transport.

Because of malnutrition and lack of sanitation, the poorest country in the Middle East has been hit by waves of disease that have become part of history books. In less than three months, cholera has killed 2,000 people and infected half a million in one of the waves the world has not seen in 50 years.

Yacoub al-Juifi, a Yemeni soldier from Sanaa who has not been paid for eight months and a family of six, says he is dying slowly. His daughter suffers from malnutrition, and his daughter receives chronic malnutrition at the hospital in Sanaa. The neighbors offer her, but they are not enough for her to recover, as her body becomes worn out.

Half of Yemenis could not reach the only clinic in his village, so he borrowed money from his relatives and friends to treat his daughter in the capital. “We are waiting for the end or the sky to open up to us,” he says.

How has a country collapsed in an area rich in wealth and income of this slider?

Yemen has long been the poorest country in the Arab world and has suffered constant wars and conflicts. The latest conflict began in 2014 when the Houthis took control of the capital and forced the president to flee into exile. In March 2015, Saudi Arabia and an alliance of Arab states launched a military operation aimed at returning Hadi. So far, the coalition has failed to achieve its stated objectives, and the country remains divided between the Houthi-dominated areas and their allies and those controlled by the Hadi government and its Arab backers in the south.

State collapse:

Many of the coalition’s air strikes have killed and wounded many civilians, including those who fell on Wednesday in raids on and around the capital Sanaa. The ongoing bombardment destroyed the country’s infrastructure, especially vital ports, important bridges, hospitals, health facilities and factories. Services on which the Yemenis depended on their lives were halted, and the destruction of the infrastructure affected Yemen’s weak economy. And even the bombing of the mission of humanitarian institutions to enter and distribute aid to those in need.

The bombing of the Sanaa International Airport in front of civil navigation for a year, meaning that it is not possible to transport commercial goods, wounded and sick Yemenis for treatment abroad, and many of them died. Civil servants in both warring administrations have not received their salaries for more than a year, increasing their poverty, especially as jobs in the war are not available.

The most affected by the suspension of salaries are the workers in the necessary sectors that deal with the crisis, such as doctors, nursing, health facilities and technicians, which led to the collapse of these sectors.

Cholera is devastating

Added to these disasters is the cholera disaster, which has flourished under conditions of war. Bacteria spread in polluted water and in sewage. Because of the accumulation of garbage piles and the destruction of sanitation facilities, Yemenis rely on polluted drinking water. Water has increased pollution from wells.

In developed countries, cholera is no longer a life-threatening disease and can be easily treated with antibiotics if it becomes advanced and dangerous. Yemen, which suffers from widespread malnutrition, especially among children, has developed a good climate for its spread.

“With malnutrition spreading among children, if they have diarrhea, they will not recover,” said Mirishtel Relano, UNICEF’s resident representative in Yemen.

Outside the cholera treatment clinic in Sanaa, Mohammed Nasser was waiting for news of his 6-month-old son Walid. A poor agricultural worker borrowed money to transfer his son to Sanaa and did not have the money to return to his hometown even if his son had recovered. “My situation is bad,” he said.

To counter the spread of cholera, the clinic has set up five tents at the rear to accommodate the growing numbers of patients. Researchers fear it will continue to spread so well that the population of Haiti is affected by the devastating earthquake of 2010.

Relief organizations cannot restore the services the government is supposed to provide. This means there is little chance of improvement unless war breaks out.

“We are almost in the third year of the war and nothing has improved and there is a limit to what we can do in this collapsed country,” says Merichtel Relano.

The UN sees the situation in Yemen as the biggest humanitarian crisis, requiring more than 10 million emergency aid and the situation could deteriorate further.

“With the collapse of the country, we are seeing a cholera epidemic and we may have seen more outbreaks in the future,” warned Peter Salama, WHO’s emergency program director.

International involvement

There is no sign of the end of the war, where the UN-sponsored peace efforts have stalled and none of the parties to the conflict has shown willingness to compromise. The Houthis and their allies continue to rule the capital while the Saudis have vowed to fight until the other side surrenders.
The UN says Yemen needs $ 2.3 billion in humanitarian aid this year, but only 41 percent of that amount. The parties involved in the war are among the most affluent countries, with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates providing sums. Critics say they spend more on humanitarian efforts than on humanitarian efforts, and their blockade of the port of Hodeidah and the closure of Sanaa airport have had a devastating impact on civilians.

The United States is a major donor but is one of the largest arms suppliers to the Saudi-led coalition. Although not directly involved in the war, they have provided military support to the coalition and Yemenis often find remnants of US-made ammunition after deadly air strikes.

None of this augurs well for Yemeni civilians.

“The war continues to haunt us from all directions and everywhere we flee,” said Saleh al-Khulani, who fled his home in northern Yemen with his wife and six children after the Saudi-led coalition launched the campaign. Khulani then fled to Sanaa after an air raid hit the camp where they were seeking refuge. He killed several of his relatives who lived on the streets for a while begging: “Sometimes we get food and sometimes we do not have what we eat.”